Breast cancer risk higher for working women

22 June Times of India

Stress at work, including prejudice and discrimination, may put professional women at a dramatically increased risk of developing breast cancer, a study has claimed. Women in professional jobs had a near 70% higher risk of breast cancer than other women, the study found.

The research, based on a 55-year study of women who were in their thirties in the 1970s, links stress to work and also shows that the longer a woman held the job, the greater the risk. The study focused on nearly 4,000 women who were all aged 36 in 1975, the Independent reported on Monday. The researchers said that while women going into management in the 1970s were breaking new ground, the same kind of stress affects women today.

"Women who entered managerial occupations in the 1970s experienced prejudice and discrimination due to prevailing cultural attitudes that men made better leaders than women," said Tetyana Pudrovska, who led the study. "Neither men or women preferred to work for a woman because women were seen as "temperamentally unfit" for management, which was consistent with the cultural stereotype of the woman boss." "Exercising job authority was particularly stressful for women in the context of gender inequality embedded in the occupational structure of the time, when women in managerial positions often faced prejudice, tokenism, discrimination, social isolation, and resistance from subordinates, colleagues, and superiors," Pudrovksa said. "We believe that women are still facing the same kind of stresses, and therefore the increased risk of developing breast cancer is likely to be there even today," Pudrovska said.